Continued:

I noticed an improvement (not the disappearance of, of course) in my level of daily anxiety since I started this thread, and last night I had the best night sleep I had in the longest time, what an improved feeling this morning!

The improvement I am experiencing makes me hopeful as to the process of (partial) Healing the dis-ease of Anxiety. I am crediting this improvement to first, my hope that there can be long-term Healing of Anxiety, that it is possible, and second to my most recent realization, an understanding I didn’t have before: that in Anxiety, there is an instinctual belief that Fear helps one survive, or be better equipped to effectively manage life.

Fear, as I experienced it when I faced the coyote, my first 1-to-1 experience of a natural predator/prey kind was not a distressing experience, there was no lack of ease (a dis-ease). It felt good! Now I understand why many people enjoy scary movies (I used to). If scary movies caused people anxiety (dis-ease), people wouldn’t keep watching them. I suppose this is why many people seek scary sports and activities like rock climbing and jumping off a plane: if those activities caused the people who did them Anxiety, they wouldn’t do them again! Fear feels good.

Fear is part of Anxiety, but there is more to anxiety than Fear, and that more makes anxiety a bad-feeling experience. Anxiety never feels good. Fear led me to focus on the coyote and the world around me; I was one with nature/ the world around, I felt elated, capable, powerful. Anxiety leads me to focus on the inside of me, in a negative way, being turned inward, separated from nature/ the world around, feeling depressed, incapable, powerless.

Because Fear is an ingredient in the mix that makes Anxiety, our instinctual belief that Fear HELPS is carried into the Anxiety experience, and we support and maintain that which we believe is helpful, or will help. But this belief is a false belief: anxiety is never helpful.

What’s more to Fear in the experience of Anxiety?

My answer (to my question): damage that was accumulated over years and longer.

To explain the Damage, I will go back to my experience with a predator, but a different kind of predator than the coyote of 2021: my mother, my personal emotional predator. Looking back at the 2021 predator-prey moments, I didn’t and don’t feel anger at the coyote: for one, I did not suffer any injury, no negative consequences, second: the natural job of a predator is to prey on species smaller or weaker than itself (and if very hungry, considers preying on a bigger/ stronger species). it wasn’t personal. My experience with the coyote did not interfere with me continuing the same daily walk after the 2- days confrontations.

But with my emotional predator it was very personal. And very unnatural. A mother is not designed or supposed to attack her own child. It is not in her instinctual job description. I bet it never happens in nature unless the mother is deranged, and is in very abnormal circumstances.

* It happens in human society, it happens a lot, that people, including mothers, are deranged and life circumstances are indeed too often abnormal.

Back to my emotional predatory childhood experience: unlike the short-term (a few moments) of my experience with the coyote, two days of a few moments of encounter on each day, my experience with my mother lasted days, months, years.. an eternity (with breaks, of course). At first, I am sure there was Fear, but that Fear- over such a long, long time- metastasized into something else: Anxiety.

Facing the coyote, I knew the danger, and when he ran away, I knew the danger was gone. With my mother, I didn’t want her to run away, I needed her to.. (change and be what a mother is supposed to be), and I had nowhere to run, too needy to run, no way to fight, too guilty to fight because I believed (falsely) that I deserved her attacks.

And so, what happened, over time, to the instinctual need within me to run or fight my personal predator?

The running and fighting turned inward: “running” inside of me, creating that sickening rush that characterizes anxiety; “fighting” inside me, creating this disquiet/ distress/ dis-ease that characterizes anxiety. The natural, helpful Fight-Flight Response to Fear turned inward, repeatedly, over a period of years, unnatural and harmful, creating damage: TS, OCD, ADD, cognitive and emotional dysfunction, in my case.

To be continued.

anita